Photo by Amirali Momeni

I live in Warwick, Rhode Island with my partner and two fur-children Louise (dog) and Howl (cat). On a Saturday afternoon you’ll find me immersed in one 15 current projects, from building furniture, to putting up shelves, painting walls or canvas, gardening, knitting, to the finishing touches on a loaf of banana bread.

 

I have felt task oriented since I was young, as it’s a form of placemaking, to me, working with your hands, engaging your thoughts into a space and the people around you. It is what fosters our relationship to the world and a feeling of belonging. It’s the most important thing to me.

 

I grew up mostly in Minnesota, but also Hawaii, Colorado, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Costa Rica, Spain, Washington, and Portugal. While I love traveling and learning about the world, there has only ever been one place that felt like home, Rhode Island. My great grandmother immigrated here, my grandmother lived here, and my mother was raised here. I can feel it, ancestral ties to Land and place are real, and an important part of culture, but that’s not something I fully appreciated until I developed an understanding of Land* in architecture school.

 

My undergraduate degree was in Mathematics and Studio Art at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania. There I worked as a painter and had an internship in historical documentation of buildings. After graduating, I worked at a health innovation company focused on the intersection of housing and health. We found policy workarounds to create housing for individuals experiencing homelessness who were frequently cycling in and out of hospitals without a stable place to heal. This experience highlighted the role of housing within community well-being and deepened my desire to explore the intricate relationships between people and placemaking, so I applied to graduate school for architecture.

 

When I began my master’s degree at the Rhode Island School of design, my perspective of architecture and housing was turned upside down. I became frustrated with what we were being taught, a male-dominated Eurocentric typology of architecture that overlooks other modes of living. We had projects that tackled pressing issues such as housing shortages, environmental and social catastrophes, but we were continuing to work through a singular, closed minded narrative. Having grown up in different areas of the world, I knew this wasn’t truth, and I became acutely aware of how political architecture can be, as it engages with social and cultural issues in our world.

 

In response to these frustrations, two friends and I formed a collective ‘Project Archive’ a curated archive of architectural precedents rooted in knowledge systems outside of the western canon that were engaging in social and climate injustices respectfully, acknowledging culture and community. The project soared and we began being invited to speak at architecture conferences, which eventually led towards developing a website and publishing a book and some zines.

 

Throughout this project I became more acquainted with the environmental catastrophes that were happening around the world due to climate change. Fixated on how in other areas of the world, decisionmakers value culture and community as a building element for a home, I developed a thesis that won an award for examining the impact of sea level rise and flooding along coastal communities in Rhode Island. I advocated for flexibility within buildings to adapt to our constantly changing landscape so that the home can truly become a part of the family and move with community. I developed a belief that we should reconsider the impact of excessive construction on our ecosystems and society.

 

After graduating, I worked at a firm down in Costa Rica designing sustainable homes, before moving back to Rhode Island to teach as a professor in the architecture department at RISD. After a few years there, I felt like I was ready to be on the frontlines, rather than just in conversation about these same topics. I wanted to engage more directly with the politics of climate change interrupting the social dimensions of living.

 

I am now pursuing a Master of Environmental Science and Management at the University of Rhode Island. Specializing in environmental policy and coastal resiliency. Here, I developed another research project on the impacts of coastal resiliency efforts in Bristol County. The project aims to create transparency of the policy and planning approaches of local government, to identify why approaches were taken, and how decisions correlate or not to a resident request and understanding of climate impacts. The research highlights a process of managed retreat happening in Warren, Rhode Island, a controversial topic that teeters between the best long-term solution for SLR, yet impacts years of developed community connection to Land and homes.

 

I’m currently working for the Rhode Island Flood Management Association as a project coordinator, and exploring what my next career move will be, but I know that the thread between all the projects I have worked on, and all the education that has intrigued me, is placemaking and relationship to space. I want to work in the politics of climate change solutions for residents, acknowledging the significant social and cultural cost of placemaking that can be impacted by disasters and climate events.

 

*I choose to keep Land capitalized when speaking of it as a proper noun, valuing more it as more than just a plot, but as someone that is living and holds knowledge. For more on this topic, check out Pollution is Colonialism by Max Liboiron.